Basu: Iowa native's extraordinary ethics draw praise

Mar. 6, 2014

Laura Duffy

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Federal prosecutors in California recently prevailed in a case involving a man charged with drug smuggling — not because they won the conviction, which they did, but because they got an appeals court to overturn it.

Maybe such things happen more often than we know, someone in law or government giving up a victory as a matter of principle. But when the most popular TV shows depict high-ranking people going to crooked lengths to get what they want, we’re not hearing enough stories of the other kind.

What makes this one especially affirming for Iowans is that the valorous U.S. attorney for the Southern District of California, Laura Duffy, is an Iowa native born and raised in Des Moines, whose resume lists, among other jobs, being a cook at the Village Inn in Ames, and assistant manager of Scandia Down and Service Merchandise in West Des Moines. Her parents still live in Des Moines.

It was her California office that prosecuted John Maloney, who was stopped at a California Border Patrol checkpoint when 321 pounds of marijuana were discovered in his car. He was charged with possession with intent to distribute. He claimed he didn’t know there was marijuana in the packages he was transporting and believed they were Clorox.

Maloney testified at his trial that he had been hired to transport the cargo from Riverside, Calif., to Las Vegas, and then was heading back to California to pick up another load for a different California location. Since such a trip would have him traveling several days, the prosecution could have questioned him on the lack of a suitcase in his car. But the assistant U.S. attorney didn’t raise that until closing arguments, on rebuttal, when he claimed Maloney must have lied about the trip because he had no luggage.

Maloney’s lawyer twice asked for a chance to rebut, but the trial court judge refused. The defense was also denied a mistrial ruling. Maloney’s conviction was appealed but was upheld by the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

It’s what happened next that turns this case from a story about ordinary legal maneuvers to one about extraordinary ethical ones. After watching a video of the closing arguments with senior attorneys, Duffy decided it was wrong for the prosecutor to have raised the luggage question only in a closing rebuttal. So she filed a motion for the court to reverse the conviction and vacate the sentence.

The court did that Feb. 28, commending Duffy and quoting former U.S. Supreme Court Justice George Sutherland from a 1935 case when he said a prosecutor “is the representative not of an ordinary party to a controversy, but of a sovereignty whose obligation to govern impartially is as compelling as its obligation to govern at all; and whose interest, therefore, in a criminal prosecution is not that it shall win a case, but that justice shall be done.”

U.S. District Judge Robert Pratt of Des Moines knows Duffy and has high praise for her. “It’s probably so unusual where the government comes in and says, ‘We screwed up. Reverse this conviction,’ ” he said.

So who is Laura Duffy? Born in 1962, she’s a Dowling Catholic High School and Iowa State University grad who also attended the University of Iowa and got her law degree at Creighton University. She joined the U.S. attorney’s office in San Diego in 1997, working primarily in narcotics enforcement. She has headed the office since 2010.

The Los Angeles Times called her indispensable to efforts to dismantle the Tijuana drug cartel. She once made news for being dropped from a helicopter onto a yacht to interview a leader of one of the world’s most violent and powerful multinational drug cartels, Javier Arellano Felix. He’s now serving life in prison.

Duffy has said she learned the importance of ensuring due process while working the other side, with the Omaha public defender’s office.

As heartening as it is to see a prosecutor do the right thing, it’s disheartening that without Duffy’s intervention, a man would have been denied due process. She plans to use the video as a training tool.

So to the lawyers-in-training out there, pay attention to this case. Pin up the Sutherland quote. Remember there is no valor in delivering a victory that lacks justice. And if you see that happen, follow Duffy’s example and act on it.